Lady Day lost her legs to a pair of scissors, and that caused a big-time case of the blues for Mick Gannon.

The lifelong Santa Cruz jazz musician initially was glad to lend his jazz memorabilia collection for a Black History Month display at the University of California at Santa Cruz. That feeling soon turned to despair, for some of the irreplaceable photographs -- including several autographed to him personally -- were cut up to make a collage.

"It's criminal," he said. "I'm sure the intent was not that, but it's just stupid to have something like this happen."

The 57-year-old Gannon, a city traffic sign maintenance worker by day, plays piano and bass in jazz clubs by night. He has been collecting jazz memorabilia for 45 years.

In late January, some university library staffers who know him asked to borrow photos of black jazz musicians.

For the first time, he lent out part of his collection, giving the library 35 of the 200 to 300 pictures, album covers and other items that he has. Sixteen of them were cut or glued to the collage, which was displayed as part of a Black History Month exhibit in February.

Stickel and other experts said they could not put a dollar figure on Gannon's loss without examining what was left of the ruined pictures. But he said an autographed photo of Parker would bring at least $2,000 and one of Holiday would be worth $1,200 to $2,000.